Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 power draw revealed by new rumour

Now that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy are out and about, it's time to focus on what Qualcomm has in store for us later this year: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 (SM8750). So far, leaks have revealed it will feature 6 Phoenix L and 2 Phoenix M CPU cores. Qualcomm has internally codenamed it Sun, and rightfully so if some rumours about its power consumption are accurate.

A post on the South Korean tech forum DCInside says one of its high-performance cores can draw up to 5.47 Watts. Both cores combined take that figure up to 9.32 Watts. These are Qualcomm's new Nuvia (likely Phoenix L) cores and not off-the-shelf Arm Cortex variants. Similarly, the Phoenix M cores draw 1.1 Watts each when stressed. In an all-core workload, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4's power draw goes as high as 14.2 Watts.

These figures were measured on an early Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 engineering sample and are subject to change in the months leading up to its release. 14 Watts is a bit too toasty for a smartphone form factor and will require a powerful cooling solution to keep thermals in check. This, combined with the increased transistor density enabled via TSMC's N3E process, should give the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 the competitive edge it needs to take on the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 and Samsung 3GAP-based Exynos 2500.

Pre-order the Samsung Galaxy sS24 Ultra on Best Buy